This is the first comic book appearance for Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo, and Chewbacca. The lightsaber makes its comic debut in this issue, although it is spelled "lightsabre," and has a pink blade rather than blue.

This issue includes the Han Solo and Jabba the HuttDocking Bay 94 scene that wasn't finished for the film. (Hutt is spelled "Hut" in this issue, as it was in all official Star Wars material before 1983.) Rather than portray Jabba as he appeared in the filmed version of the scene (a large Human wearing furs, as played by Declan Mulholland)—which was never meant to be how Jabba would have looked in the film anyway, had the scene been completed—the likeness of Mosep Binneed, a Nimbanel seen in the background during the Mos Eisley scenes, was used. This likeness of Jabba was also used in Star Wars 28: What Ever Happened to Jabba the Hut? and Star Wars 37: In Mortal Combat. After Return of the Jedi officially established what Jabba looked like, it was decided to make Mosep an associate of Jabba, and the Nimbanese a species of Hutt servants. The article "Red Five" in Star Wars Insider 149 has established that the "Jabba" in the Marvel comics is in fact Mosep, who sometimes used Jabba's name in interactions.

Similarly, Garindan and the IT-O interrogation droid look different in this issue from the way they do in the film. As editor Roy Thomas would explain in the letters column of issue 7, much of the artwork for the early Marvel issues was based on an unfinished cut of the film with incomplete postproduction, so the Marvel artists didn't have access to many final images before their version went to press.

In her message to Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia states that one "Bail Antillies" is her father. Bail Antilles was later mentioned in The Phantom Menace. In 2007, the Marvel adaptation of A New Hope was released in a trade paperback and bundled with the 2006 DVD release of A New Hope. "Bail Antillies" was replaced with "Bail Organa" in this edition.

This is the first issue in the series where the traditional Star Wars logo on the cover has the "S" attached to the "T" in the word "star." On the previous issue's cover, they do not connect.

The original cover price for this issue was 30 cents. There were also several reprint versions, easily identified by "Reprint" in the upper left hand corner of the cover or on the inside indicia, or by the price and number appearing inside a diamond on the cover with no date or UPC. These "Reprint" versions were found in the bagged comic three packs commonly found at department and drug stores in the 1970s and 1980s. The first eighteen or so issues of this series are available in the bagged three packs.

In 1994, Dark Horse Comics acquired the rights to reprint this issue and the other parts in the adaptation.

Along with the first issue, this is one of the most reprinted comics of all time. It has been reprinted along with the other five parts of the adaptation in standard formats and also large treasury size and small novel size editions.